“I photographed the construction blueprints on microfilm, but had no way of smuggling them out to your people after I lost my contact.”
“Jim Hanamura?”
“Yes. Is he dead?” Nogami asked, certain of the answer.
Pitt nodded. “Cut down by Kamatori.”
“Jim was a good man. I hope Kamatori died slowly.”
“He didn’t exactly enjoy the trip.”
“Can you please help us?” Mancuso asked urgently, insistently. “We’re running out of time.”
Nogami didn’t seem the least bit rushed. “You hope to get out through the tunnel to Edo City, I suppose.”
“We had thought we might take the train,” said Weatherhill, his eyes aimed through the door into the corridor.
“Fat chance.” Nogami shrugged. “Since you guys penetrated the complex, Suma ordered the tube guarded by an army of robots on the island side and a huge security force of specially trained men at the Edo City end. An ant couldn’t get through.”
Stacy looked at him. “What do you suggest?”
“The sea. You might get lucky and be picked up by a passing ship.”
Stacy shook her head. “That’s out. Any foreign ship that came within five kilometers would be blown out of the water.”
“You have enough on your minds,” Pitt said calmly, his eyes seemingly fixed on one wall as if seeing something on the other side. “Concentrate on planting the explosives. Trust the escape to Al and me.”
Stacy, Weatherhill, and Mancuso all looked at each other. Then Weatherhill nodded in agreement. “You’re on. You’ve saved our lives and got us this far. Be downright rude not to trust you now.”
Pitt turned to Nogami. “How about it, Doc, care to tag along?” Nogami shrugged and gave a half smile. “Might as well. Thanks to you, my usefulness here is finished. No sense in hanging around for Suma to have my head lopped off.”
“Any suggestions for a place to set explosives?” asked Weatherhill.
“I’ll show you an access hole to the electrical cables and fiber optics that feed the entire complex. Set your charge there and you’ll put this place out of business for a month.”
“What level?”
Nogami tilted his head toward the ceiling. “The level above, the fifth.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Weatherhill said to Pitt.
“Ready now.” Cautiously, Pitt slipped into the corridor and dogtrotted back to the elevator. They all followed and piled in and stood silent as it rose to the fifth level, tensed for any trouble they might face when the doors opened. Suddenly the elevator dropped down instead of going up. Someone had beat them to it by pressing the button on the level below.
“Damn,” Mancuso swore bitterly. “That’s all we need.”
“Everybody!” Pitt ordered. “Push the doors together to keep them from opening. Al, lean on the ‘door close’ button.”
The elevator stopped and they all pressed their hands on the doors and pushed. The doors tried to spread apart but could only jerk spasmodically without opening.
“Al!” Pitt said softly. “Now hit five!”
Giordino had kept one finger pressed against the “door close” button so tightly the knuckle went white. He released it and pushed the button marked 5.
The elevator shuddered for a few moments as if torn in two directions, then it gave an upward jerk and began rising.
“That was close, too close,” Stacy sighed.
“Going up,” Giordino announced. “Housewares, kitchen utensils, dishes, and hardware—” Abruptly he broke off. “Oh, oh, we haven’t tagged home base yet. Someone else wants on. The light on five just blinked.”
Again alerted, every eye unconsciously rotated toward the panel and the small indicator light that was flashing for the fifth level. Then, as if activated by the same set of gears, they turned and crouched, ready to spring into action.
A white-coated engineer was standing there wearing a hard hat, intently studying notations on a clipboard. He didn’t even look up as he entered the elevator. Only when it began to seep through to him that the elevator wasn’t moving did he gaze around into the Occidental faces. None that he observed were smiling.
He opened his mouth to shout, but Pitt clamped one hand over the engineer’s mouth and squeezed the carotid arteries with the other. Even before the eyes rolled back in the head and the body went limp and sagged to the elevator floor, Nogami was out and leading the others into a passageway.
Weatherhill was the last to go. He paused and looked at Pitt. “When and where do you want us to join up?” he asked.
“Topside in twelve minutes. We’ll hold the cab.”
“Good luck,” Mancuso muttered, hurrying after the others, wondering what the man from NUMA had on his canny mind.
Giordino looked down at the unconscious engineer. “Where do we stash him?”
Pitt pointed up at the access door in the ceiling of the elevator. “Tear his lab coat into strips, then tie and gag him. We’ll park him on the elevator roof.”
As Giordino pulled off the white lab coat and began ripping it apart, he gave Pitt a half-crooked grin. “I heard it too.”
Pitt grinned back. “Ah, yes, the sweet sound of freedom.”
“If we can snatch it.
“Optimism, optimism,” Pitt muttered cheerfully as he launched the elevator upward. “Now let’s show some speed. It’s twelve minutes to show time.”
55
THE MAIT TEAM deep in the Dragon Center could not have been under heavier stress than the two men sweating out the minutes in the communications room of the Federal Headquarters Building. Raymond Jordan and Donald Kern sat watching a huge clock and listening anxiously for the team call sign to be beamed from a satellite in a fixed synchronous position over Japan.
As if triggered by the sudden buzz of a telephone sitting on the table between them, their eyes met, their faces drawn. Jordan picked up the receiver as if it carried the plague.
“Yes, Mr. President,” he answered without hesitation.
“Any word?”
“No, sir.”
The President went quiet for a moment, then said solemnly, “Forty-five minutes, Ray.”
“Understood, sir. Forty-five minutes until the assault.”
“I’ve called off the Delta Forces. After a conference with my other security advisers and the Joint Chiefs, I’ve come to the decision that we cannot afford the time for a military operation. The Dragon Center must be destroyed before it becomes operational.
Jordan felt as though his world was slipping away. He threw the dice one more time. “I still believe that Senator Diaz and Congresswoman Smith may be on the island.”
“Even if you’re right, their possible deaths would have no bearing on my decision.”
“You won’t change your mind and give them another hour?” Jordan pleaded.
“I wish I could find it in my heart to let you have more time, but our national security is at high risk. We cannot allow Suma the opportunity to launch his campaign of international blackmail.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“At least I’m not alone. Secretary of State Oates has briefed the leaders of the NATO nations and Soviet President Antonov, and they have each agreed that it’s in all our mutual interest to proceed.”
“Then we write off the team,” said Jordan, his frustration showing in his tone, “and perhaps Diaz and Smith.”
“I deeply regret compromising the lives of dedicated Americans, some of whom were good friends. Sorry, Ray, I’m faced with the age-old quandary of sacrificing a few to save many.”
Jordan set the receiver in its cradle. He seemed strangely hunched and shrunken. “The President,” he said vacantly.
“No reprieve?” asked Kern grimly.